Calendar of Events

Donations and membership fees help fund the Lamorinda Democratic Club's activities. These include our donations to local Democratic candidates, meeting expenses, production of our newsletter, voter registration, and get-out-the-vote efforts.

Oct

11

We are nearing the end of the election season (FINALLY!).Come and try something different: an ice cream social and a vote on LDC local candidate endorsements.

First, chill out with ice cream and enjoy the company of your Democratic friends and neighbors.Next, warm up to our invited Democratic candidates who will give us their best reasons why we should vote for them.

We will also be honoring one of the Club’s founding members, Paul Popenoe, and wishing him luck in his new adventure and move to Maine. We will miss him!

We hope you can join us on Thursday, September 8th, for a productive and informative evening, and a fond farewell to our friend.

The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and will be held at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd, in Lafayette. There is a $5 donation at the door to help cover meeting expenses. A donation is not necessary for members with paid-up 2016 membership or students.

Sep

3

The Lamorinda Democratic Club’s next meeting on Thursday, September 8, will feature a panel discussion of Common Core and a vote on endorsements for the November election.

It has been six years since California adopted K through 12 Common Core standards. Please join us for a provocative panel discussion with four Lamorinda educators. Topics include:

Where are we now?

How have Lamorinda schools adjusted to the new standards?

How has Lamorinda learning and teaching been most affected?

The panel discussion will be followed by a business meeting to vote on the recommendations of our Candidates and Issues Endorsement Committee and the Club's Board of Directors.

The meeting begins at 7:00 pm and will be held at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center, 3491 Mt. Diablo Blvd, in Lafayette. There is a $5 donation at the door to help cover meeting expenses. A donation is not necessary for members with paid-up 2016 membership or students.

The Lamorinda Democratic Club, Diablo Valley Democratic Club, San Ramon Valley Democratic Club, Contra Costa Young Democrats, Tri-Valley Democratic Club, and Democrats of Rossmoor invite you to join them as author David Dayen discusses his new book on Tuesday, August 16, at the Lafayette Library and Learning Center’s Community Room. The social time will begin at 7 p.m. with Dayen’s presentation to follow at 7:30 p.m. and a book signing with the author to follow at 8:30 p.m. Copies of the book will be available for purchase.

"Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud" was the 2016 winner of the Ida and Studs Terkel Prize. The book tells the dramatic true story of how, in the depths of the Great Recession, a cancer nurse, a car dealership worker, and an insurance fraud specialist helped uncover the largest consumer crime in American history—a scandal that implicated dozens of major executives on Wall Street. They called it foreclosure fraud: millions of families were kicked out of their homes based on false evidence by mortgage companies that had no legal right to foreclose.

Lisa Epstein, Michael Redman, and Lynn Szymoniak did not work in government or law enforcement. They had no history of anti-corporate activism. Instead they were all foreclosure victims, and while struggling with their shame and isolation they committed a revolutionary act: closely reading their mortgage documents, discovering the deceit behind them, and building a movement to expose it.

The New York Times called Dayen’s book a “gripping story of foreclosure fraud,” Publisher’s Weekly said that Dayen’s “absorbing account grabs the reader early on and doesn’t let go,” and Kirkus Reviews wrote that the book is, “an inspiring, well-rendered, deeply reported, and often infuriating account.”

Dayen, currently touring the country to support the book’s release, is a journalist who writes about economics and finance. He is a contributing writer to Salon.com and The Intercept, and writes a weekly column for The Fiscal Times and The New Republic. He also writes for The American Prospect, Vice, The Huffington Post, and more. He lives in Los Angeles, where prior to writing about politics he had a 15-year career as a television producer and editor.